10 THINGS I WISH I KNEW AS AN EMERGING HEALER
If you look at where I am now, you would most likely consider me to be successful as a Healer. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to travel the world and facilitate my work on almost every continent. I've written a book published by one of the top five publishing houses, been featured in major press outlets, and can call several household names my clients. But it wasn’t always like this.
Looking back, here is the advice I would give my younger self.
Make friends with failure.
There have been many inspired projects, businesses, and methods of healing that, when actualized, turned out to be massive failures. Even though I was often devastated and financially ruined, I have to credit failure with the success I have today. The more I have failed, the more I have learned what works and what doesn’t and how to tell if something feels right or if it feels forced from the start. And I don’t think I’m done failing by any means, but I do think that when failure comes, I will be more able to meet it with gratitude. I trust the peaks and the valleys in life and have found that often on the other side of failure is success. There have been moments when I looked around and thought, “Well, it can only be up from here.” The better friends I became with failure, the more willing I was to take risks. Knowing what it means to lose everything, and often having nothing to lose, I began climbing.
2. You already have it all within you.
There is a saying based on the research of psychologist Anders Ericsson and popularized by Malcom Gladwell that it takes ten thousand hours to become a master. Yet, a true master of any craft knows there is always more to learn. As a curious spirit, I think I took that truth a bit too much to heart. When I first began working as a healer, I wanted to learn every modality I could, visit every teacher and healer coming through town, go to every healing site, and read every book. What I found along the way was inspiring, and I learned much but was also disheartened by the greed, competition, and contradictions I witnessed the closer I got to certain teachers. The more I looked behind the curtain, the more I understood that we all have an innate holiness that can’t be taught; it needs only to be chosen and seen by us alone. Then we know how to heal, how to live. Teachers can help us to see that holiness within by holding a mirror up to us with their wisdom, words, and techniques, but no matter how much training we do, we still must inevitably choose our wholeness.
3. Make peace with other’s projections of you.
When I was twelve, I realized not everyone could see auras and that the colors and shapes I saw around people was their energy body. That was when I began becoming really interested in all things esoterica and spent my free time at the public library reading up on auras, energy, and healing. Simultaneously, I grew up fast, and at 17 I already lived on my own, felt older, and resonated with friends much older than me. When I first started facilitating healing work, most healers and spiritual teachers were past middle-aged men with accents and whimsical outfits. I was young, had a face shape that made me look even younger, and at age eighteen, people assumed I was thirteen and clueless. They would take one look at me and ask me what I really knew about life. I had to compensate for my young appearance with skill and talent and was slowly able to build a healthy following through word of mouth. As I began to be more well known, people assumed that everything came easily for me and that I came from either a really loving family or had a rich partner who supported me. No one saw the years and tears I put in to get to where I was. I used to get so mad about people's assumptions of me. But eventually I made peace with it. Let people think what they want. I know who I am, where I’ve been, and what I am capable of. It is exhausting to try to prove yourself to or seek acknowledgment from others. I benefited from keeping my sleeves up and my heart open no matter what judgments came my way.
4. Be your own healer.
This is a big one.
The reason why I can speak to not giving your power away to external sources of healing is because I have been there. Growing up, I didn’t have an adult I could go to for guidance. My mother and I had a tumultuous relationship, and my dad wasn’t around. When I began my own healing studies, I desperately wanted a mentor, but every time I met a woman who I thought could be that, I was faced with competition. When I thought I found a man who could guide me, I was faced with severe creepiness (except for one). This helped me to reluctantly understand that I have to find my own way. I began looking to nature as my mentor, the earth as my mother, the sky as my father. With this understanding in my heart, I saw that it turned out that I was guided and cared for all along.
Off on my own healing journey I began. Because of the chaos I grew up around and perhaps from my Scorpio nature, when it came to my own healing, I needed intensity. Long fasts, silent meditation retreats, and going deep into the Amazon jungle in complete isolation for up to a month at a time was the kind of healing that appealed to and worked for me. I arrogantly assumed that if it worked for me, it could work for everyone. I righteously believed that if folks ate healthy, lived soberly, exercised, practiced meditation, and received reiki, they would heal. I didn’t understand that these things aren’t for everyone. I realized no healing path we attempt really works if we have no will. If I really want to support others' healing, I need to be my own healer and hope that inspires others to do the same.
5. Trust your client’s capability.
I think a big mistake emerging healers make is thinking they are further along on their healing path than their clients. This is a big healer ego lie. No matter how far you have gotten, you always have further to go. Healing is like a spiral, not linear. A beginner's mind is a wise mind. People only heal when they are ready to and will heal in their own divine timing and their own way. You cannot do it for them, no matter how much you wish you could. If you try to take it on for them, you will get sick and frustrated. Trust your clients’ ability to move forward with patience, presence, and perseverance, and to be their own healer.
Well-intended healers can sometimes get in the way of their clients' natural healing process, going too fast or being too pushy. I am often underestimated because of my gentle approach to healing, but that gentleness was hard-won and a result of seeing the lasting, integrated benefits of folks meeting their own healing at the right pace and time for them. Sure, I will nudge them along, but my goal is to help them see themselves feeling accountable and responsible for their healing journey, however that may come about. Having been a practicing healer for decades, at this point I can say that I have witnessed absolute miracles in my clients who were ready and willing to heal: recovery from terminal illnesses, raising the children they never thought they could have, going from abject poverty to a successful entrepreneur. And I can happily say that these miracles have nothing to do with me and everything to do with their own capability to heal.
6. Trust what you have given.
One of the mistakes I see emerging healers make, and one I am definitely guilty of myself, is giving way too much in a healing session to the point of overcompensation. It is natural to be excited about all the techniques you have learned and want to share it all in the context of one session, but it is worth it to consider what your clients can actually integrate and assimilate. What I have noticed over the years is that sometimes the simplest action or phrase is what folks remember the most. Knowing when what you have given is enough and synthesizing the modalities you love is an art form that I am excited to share with each individual in Apprentice of Original Essence.
7. Heal and be healed.
When we understand that no matter how far along we are on our healing path, we are always at the beginning, that there is no “done” when it comes to this spiral path of healing, then we can have a refreshed experience when it comes to our healing journey. When I first started out, any time I set an intention, that intention was the same: heal the world. But along the way I realized that it is insurmountable. Some folks are perfectly fine being and bringing misery, and they are not my responsibility. So I changed that intention to heal and be healed.
The more healing I do on myself, the more I see those I reach healing. When I create space in a Medicine Reading or Element Retreat for others’ healing, I am also receiving healing. A beautiful infinity knot of gratitude and generosity forms. I see now there is no difference between healing and being healed.
8. Energy Exchange.
By the age of 24 I had amassed a large enough following to require opening up my own healing space in New York City. After saving for five years and being approached by an investor, I did an expensive gut renovation on the place, faced the exorbitant rent, and had about 30 employees who depended on me. With all that overhead in consideration, I somehow idealized my way into making the yoga classes and many of the ceremonies I led by donation. When folks came, they very rarely gave the suggested donation. In fact, most would give their pocket change, leave the place a mess, and, of course, the ones who gave the least would find the most to complain about. I began to realize the hard way that for whatever reason, folks usually only appreciate what they are given when they have to give in return to receive. I suppose that this is how we tap into the energy of balance and create win/wins for all involved. Now if I do a free offering of some kind, I request that folks in attendance pay it forward. I am very careful about who I give scholarships to, and if I give one, it is to someone who I know will share a lot of medicine with the world and help me to feel a little less alone on this healing path.
9. Your Life Experiences are Your Best Education. Don’t Forget to Live.
There is something so beautiful about a well planned ceremony filled with people and the hard work of healing, but it is important to remember that life itself is healing.
I think one issue that beginning healers face is thinking that healing needs to be so elaborate and precise all the time. It is ok to allow the effort to be at ease and learn and grow from simply living. I also see a familiar sense of rushing, wanting to be immediately successful as a healer and therefore putting a lot of pressure on themselves and their practice.
I am not afraid of hard work. I began working in my early teens willingly. At one point, I had four jobs, one where my shift began at 10:00 pm and ended at 8:00 am, leaving me an hour to rest and shower before my next job shift began. I took this work ethic into my healing practice and personal healing journey. Focused on building my practice, healing hard, and working hard, I overlooked the healing that occurs in the in-between moments in life. Cuddling on the couch with a beautiful animal, preparing a thoughtful meal, and taking a bath can bring as much healing as an intensive pilgrimage. This is part of what inspired my sharing of Ritual Baths and eventually my book, Ritual Baths, Be Your Own Healer. Because of seeing the medicine in the in-between moments, I became a receptive chalice and began allowing my work to come to me instead of cultivating and striving. This practice ensured that the right clients and opportunities would find me if I could just have enough trust and openness to let them come. This shift is what took my work from locally well known to globally well known.
10. Healing isn’t Homogeneous.
As my client base broadened and I began reaching folks from different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, I started to learn that healing isn’t homogeneous. There is no one-track path to healing. Humbled by this understanding, I began encouraging folks to be their own healer and used my natural gifts of seeing and understanding energy to support them on this path. I learned that with the right intention, almost anything we do or are can be healing. I have met taxi drivers who hold more capacity for supporting others’ healing in their left pinky finger than many who sit on the stage of “guru” or “shaman.” Art heals, teaching heals, listening heals, and healing is so much more than our profession. Life is sacred. Life is healing if we instinctively reach toward what makes us feel more alive. We are on the healing spiral.
These 10 understandings have brought me to where I am today. When I’m being interviewed, I’m often asked how I got started. I learned the hard way along the way. My hope is that now I can support emerging and seasoned healers with the experience I have garnered throughout the decades, and through Apprentice of Original Essence, Medicine Readings, and Element Retreat.
Apprentice of Original Essence
February 27 – June 5, 2025
BECOME AN APPRENTICE TO YOUR OWN SOUL’S CALLING
Over the past two cohorts, this container has held a vast spectrum of folks who are called to express their healing light...
from mothers to midwives to death doulas,
from musicians to artists to actresses,
from doctors to herbalists to acupuncturists,
from veterinarians to psychologists to sound healers...
It’s profoundly moving seeing so many of you accepting the bigness of your healing capacity and spreading it throughout all sectors of life.
It is so needed.
If you’re feeling the pull to express from the truest part of yourself, apply now.